After ‘candid’ US-China talks, experts see hope for stability

A long-overdue, top-level dialogue eased U.S.-China tensions this week, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held what he called “candid” talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, and both sides broached deep sources of distrust.

A vital component of the meetings, officials on both sides said, was to clarify each country’s intentions in fundamental areas of disagreement – discord rooted in Beijing’s view that the United States seeks to curb China’s rise, and Washington’s belief that China aspires to undermine the U.S.-led post World War II order.

The trip by Mr. Blinken, the highest-ranking Biden administration official to visit China, pulled the superpowers’ relations out of a nosedive. President Joe Biden said on Sunday that he hopes to meet with Mr. Xi in “the next several months.”

“The world needs a generally stable China-U.S. relationship,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Blinken on Monday, as they met before a vast, verdant mural at the Great Hall of the People. “Planet Earth is big enough to accommodate the respective development and common prosperity of China and the United States.”

Although great challenges remain, the meetings mark a new opportunity for U.S.-China relations. Diplomacy that addresses each side’s suspicions and mistrust head-on could help identify where the true conflicts lie and where there is room for compromise, experts in U.S.-China relations say.

“Without trust, everyone sees each other from their own imagination or concern,” says Wang Yiwei, professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “What is the meaning of ‘change the international order’ or ‘containment’? We need to clarify the ‘new cold war.’”

At times, Mr. Xi and Mr. Blinken spoke directly to these issues.

“China respects the interests of the United States and will not challenge or replace the United States,” Mr. Xi said. Noting progress on specific issues, he said, “This is good.”

Mr. Blinken, speaking later, also reported “progress” and said his talks with China’s leaders, including Foreign Minister Qin Gang and top diplomat Wang Yi, had steadied a relationship that was “at a point of instability.”

“One of the most important things for me to do on this trip was to disabuse our Chinese hosts of the notion that we are seeking to economically contain them. We’re not,” Mr. Blinken told reporters before his departure Monday evening.

“We are not about decoupling; we’re about de-risking and diversifying,” he said.

More high-level U.S.-China engagement will unfold soon, Mr. Blinken said. Mr. Qin accepted his invitation to go to Washington and other U.S. officials are expected to visit Beijing as well.

Mr. Blinken highlighted agreements to increase the number of commercial passenger flights and people-to-people exchanges between the U.S. and China, and to explore ways to restrict the trafficking of fentanyl precursor agents. But he acknowledged much work remains. “Progress is hard. It takes time,” he said. “It’s not the product of one visit, one trip, one conversation.”

One top-priority U.S. goal that Mr. Blinken raised repeatedly during his meetings, but failed to achieve, was to restore military-to-military and reliable crisis communications channels with Beijing. “At this moment, China has not agreed to move forward,” he said, later indicating discussions on the topic would continue. Recent close calls between U.S. and Chinese ships and aircraft make this need “imperative,” he said.

Beijing shut down military-to-military dialogue last year to protest the August visit of then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, the self-governed island off mainland China’s southern coast that Beijing claims as a province. Although three U.S.-China hotlines set up since 1997 still exist, they are ineffectual because when Washington calls, Beijing often declines to answer.

“It’s in our mutual interest to make sure that the competitive aspects of the relationship don’t veer into conflict,” Mr. Blinken stressed.

Beijing has been reluctant to talk with Washington – even at times of crisis – in part because it believes U.S. military operations in the vicinity of mainland China and Taiwan are intended to constrain China and undermine its territorial claims over not only Taiwan but also the South and East China Seas.

“As far as China is concerned, America shouldn’t be in those parts of the western Pacific that China regards as its sphere of influence,” says Nigel Inkster, a China expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and former British intelligence officer. “So any disposition by China to accede to U.S. requests for crisis communication or guardrails has the effect of legitimizing a presence that China does not want to legitimize.”

Indeed, China believes that Washington is waging a broad campaign to contain its rise not only geographically and militarily, but also economically and politically. “Western countries – led by the U.S. – have implemented all-around containment, encirclement, and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development,” Mr. Xi said in March, according to state media.

China suspects that Washington intends to “stop China’s rise, prevent China’s reunification, and delink with China to slow its growth,” says Shen Dingli, a Shanghai-based expert on international relations.

In his meetings, Mr. Blinken sought to lay out more clearly what the U.S. does and does not seek to contain.

He stressed that “decoupling or economic containment” was not a U.S. goal. On the contrary, it would be “disastrous,” he said. “China’s broad economic success is ... in our interest,” he argued, noting that bilateral trade last year reached a record of nearly $700 billion.

But Washington is curtailing China’s access to what he called “narrowly focused” technologies used for advanced military items such as nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles, as well as for repressive purposes, he said.

Mr. Blinken reiterated that Washington does not support Taiwan’s independence nor any unilateral change to the status quo by either side. But he did push back on what he called China’s “provocative actions in the Taiwan Strait, as well as the South and East China Seas.”

“With the Chinese exerting a greater level of military display, deterrence, signals of resolve, and the United States, in turn, showing its own deterrence,” both sides are eroding confidence in the agreements that have kept the peace in the Taiwan Strait for more than 50 years, says Michael Swaine, a China defense expert and senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington. “There’s been a lot of confidence lost.”

Moreover, Washington views China’s increasingly aggressive military maneuvers as not only risky but also indicative of a larger push by Beijing to advance territorially while undercutting international maritime law and freedom of navigation – challenging the existing international order in the Indo-Pacific.

“The U.S. suspicion is that China wants to replace America as the next generation of global leader,” says Dr. Shen.

In some regards, he says, China does indeed harbor this ambition. “China says, ‘I want to be even richer’,” he says. “The only consequence when China becomes richer and richer is to replace America, to make America the next No. 2.”

Given the growing rivalry between the two superpowers, several experts say Washington and Beijing could benefit from quiet diplomacy and extended leadership summits that might contribute to a more candid airing of views.

“Can we reassure China that we’re not trying to change the regime?” wonders Lyle Goldstein, Director of the Asia Engagement Program at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank. For its part, can China “reassure the world ... and the United States that they are not after some kind of hegemony?” 

In the absence of trust, experts suggest the two sides could move toward a more transactional relationship that stresses reciprocity and predictability.

When two major powers enjoy such significant influence around the world, “you’re not going to be able to have a situation where one is going to give in and the other side is dominant,” says Dr. Swaine. “You’ve got to find middle ground.”